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My video game developers need unions story: I was a core developer on a major feature of Sleeping Dogs/'True Crime: Hong Kong' for 2+ years. At one point, when
by Tiktaalik 8y ago
My video game developers need unions story:
I was a core developer on a major feature of Sleeping Dogs/'True Crime: Hong Kong' for 2+ years. At one point, when the game was still being published by ATVI under the title 'True Crime: Hong Kong', ATVI cancelled the game and 100+ developers were laid off including me. Fast forward a few months and miraculously Square Enix decided to pick up the publishing rights for the name, invested a few more months in polish to finish up the title and released it as Sleeping Dogs. I was of course delighted that this canned game saw the light of day and people were able to play it.
In Sleeping Dogs, despite the significant work I put on the project my name appears in 'Special Thanks' instead of being listed as part of the development team. This is very unfair and inappropriate.
Enforcing a clear set of crediting rules would be one of the things that a game developers union could do.
- danbolt 8y agoThis is a bit off-topic, but a lot of my friends and peers who have Cantonese-speaking heritage (eg: Chinese-Canadian) have spent a lot of time playing Sleeping Dogs and I think deep-down there's a representation they resonate with in the game. Kotaku even did an article on the topic years ago.[1] Thank you for investing (uncredited!) time and work into the project, as I think it's likely given something special to a group of people. [1] https://kotaku.com/what-sleeping-dogs-gets-so-right-about-being-an-asian-a-1644011008 https://kotaku.com/what-sleeping-dogs-gets-so-right-about-be...
- jarsin 8y agoDid you use skookumscript? Just curious because they say it was heavily used in Sleeping Dogs. I like skookumscript and miss it now that I switched from unreal to unity.
- Tiktaalik 8y agoYes. The primary author of skookumscript worked at UFG. I helped designers debug many failing skookumscripts and built a lot of hooks for them for specialized missions.
- Guereric 8y agoSleeping Dogs is one of my favourite games of all time. It got me hooked immediately from the login screen with the unforgettable soundtrack. Thanks for your contribution to the game.